Commentary by Alexander B. Grosart:

Of no contemporary of equal notoriety in men's mouths over so many years, do we know so little as of him. The Damascus blade of Thomas Nashe wounded him mortally. He was speedily forgotten — though he lived on to an unusual age; and no one seems to have cared to rescue his memory from its swift and inexorable oblivion. Even his academic course is obscure and dateless. We have had to wait for these long centuries to learn the chief facts of it contained in his (so-called) "Letter-Book."